Category Archives: Gear/Equipment

This could be an excellent addition to your New Media audio kit, whether for music or podcasting. Record direct to iPhone or iPad. — Douglas

Roland have released a compact audio mixer that allows users to perform, mix audio, and record video with your smartphone, all at once. Go:Mixer allows users to capture a high quality audio track at the same time the video is recorded, and mix in vocals, instruments and backing music on the fly. Simply plug in the pocket device to capture a pristine stereo soundtrack directly to your video as you perform. With multiple inputs available, you can connect a mic, musical instruments, and media players and mix them all together live while you shoot. Instead of relying on your phones noisy mono mic or recording external audio tracks that you have to sync later in a video editor, you can now record top-quality audio in one quick and easy step.

With more and more of us doing live streaming and YouTube videos — along with tech projects and other closeup video work — this little DIY “tripod” could be a great item for your toolkit. I know it would come in really handy for me when I am doing an Arduino or Raspberry Pi video and trying to show people how to cook up jumpers to the — for me — tiny IO pins on these boards. Heck, I practically need a magnifying glass when I do it, so anything I can do to help them see it more clearly would be a great benefit Of course, it doesn’t just have to be tech videos. This would be great for painting demos, craft projects and any other small thing that you are trying to demo. — Douglas

Photographers looking for a simple system to send live streaming video from almost any available camera may be interested in a new piece of hardware called Freecast.

Freecast has been specifically designed to wirelessly cast live video to production monitors or iOS devices allowing you to share video footage in real time from a camera straight to social media or other sources.

I have been looking at one of these gimbals for a long time, but haven’t found one that I really NEED. This Smooth q at only $139 could be a possibility, though. Watch below for a complete review with all the pros and cons. — Douglas

Ok, this is just cool. (SMILE) Another way of making music for all your New Media projects and whatever else us happening in your life. Portable, too! I don’t normally link to Kickstart projects, as they often don’t come to fruition, but this was a cool enough idea, it made the cut to be included here. — Douglas

If you want to make electronic music, the tools to do so are just a quick search of your preferred app store for an appropriate sound program. Then again, as amazing and versatile as touchscreens are, it’s hard to match the feeling and control capabilities of an actual physical device.

Live streaming is exploding in popularity and this the could help your live streams look as professional as possible while making it all bit easier on you. This is like having your own switcher like they have at traditional television stations. Punch up whatever video, slides webcams, you want with the touch of a button. Available May 15, 2017 — Douglas

An interesting bit of software for those of us who produce our own videos without the benefits of a a large crew and a lot of money. Adding the voice recognition piece to the standard teleprompter could be a winning combination for this software. — Douglas

Teleprompters help you stay on script and produce great, value-packed content. Try PrompSmart, the smart prompt app you can use from your phone or tablet. It works on any mobile device and integrates with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and Box. Make better, value-packed video with a little help from PromptSmart.

At the $10 price point, I ordered one of these immediately. I had been looking to make my own from a mechanical kitchen timer, but there is no way I could make a finished and functional device for this price. I’ll post more when I get this in-hand. In order to receive the $10 price, look in the righthand sidebar of the Amazon page under Other Sellers on Amazon and select the first entry, sold by Amazon.com— Douglas

This great video showed up in my YouTube subscriptions and I wanted to pass it along for any New Media producers who might be looking for ways to improve their on-location audio. Tom Antos gives a great demo and run down the Rode NTG 4+ Shotgun Mic and accessories.

Review: Neat’s $99 Widget is a crazy-looking no-frills microphone, but it sounds awesome

With every passing generation, computers get better displays, processors, speakers, and more.

Microphones though? Not so much.

That means that if you have any interest in documenting anything involving sound – podcasting, vlogging, singing – you’ll need a serious upgrade. And while podcast mics exist aplenty, few are as immediately eye-catching as Neat Microphone’s Widget series, a set of vibrant condenser microphones.

I discovered this microphone through, of all things, an advertisement on Instagram?!? What?!?! A useful social media advertisement. If all ads could be as targeted to me as this one, I might not complain about them so much. That said, the ad immediately made me want to check our the Shure MV88. I am always on the lookout for useful New Media Gear and this looks to be another device you might want to add to your arsenal. As I don’t have one in-hand, I have included some links below to give you an overview of how people are responding to this mic and some real world usage examples.

One dislike that crops up for me is the inability to use it with a cover. I know, making a device that works with any of the thousands of covered out there would be nearly impossible, but I hate having to pull my phone out of its cover to use it and I miss the protection it provides when working. I also worry about external devices plugged into the Lightning port, as I am always afraid I am going to break the port accidentally.

Beyond those fairly small quibbles though, the audio samples from the mic sound good and it can help to keep your recording kit a bit smaller. You’ll want an iPhone with a larger storage capacity in order to insure you aren’t constantly filling it up with audio. My 16 GB iPhone 6 already complains about being full much too often and I am sure I would run into even larger issues if I were recording audio to it regularly.